1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the fields of cancer and cancer progression, molecular medicine and drug delivery and, more specifically, to molecules that selectively home to vasculature of pre-malignant dysplastic lesions or to vasculature of malignancies.
2. Background Information
A major hurdle to advances in preventing or treating cancer is the lack of agents that are effective in selectively targeting a cancer or pre-cancerous tissue while sparing normal cells. Radiation therapy and surgery, for example, which generally are localized treatments, can cause substantial damage to normal tissue in the treatment field, resulting in scarring and loss of normal tissue. Furthermore, chemotherapy, which generally is administered systemically, can cause substantial damage to normal organs such as normal skin, bone marrow, mucosa, and small intestine, which undergo rapid cell turnover and continuous cell division. As a result, undesirable side effects such as nausea, loss of hair and drop in blood cell count occur as a result of systemic treatment with a chemotherapeutic agent. Such undesirable side effects often limit the amount of drug that can be safely administered, thereby reducing survival rate and impacting the quality of patient life.
Selective delivery of therapeutics such as anti-angiogenic agents to vasculature that supports tumors would result in less toxic therapy since rapidly proliferating normal cells would be spared. Similarly, selective delivery of anti-angiogenic agents to vasculature of dysplastic cells that are not yet malignant would provide a prophylactic strategy for reducing the risk of cancer. However, to date, it has been difficult to produce drugs that are delivered specifically to tumor vasculature or the vasculature of dysplastic, pre-malignant tissues. Thus, there is a need for molecules that selectively target malignant tissue such as malignant skin, as well as for molecules that selectively target pre-malignant dysplastic tissues such as pre-malignant dysplastic skin. The present invention satisfies these needs and also provides related advantages.